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Baylor Becomes Third Hospital In U.S. To Transplant 4,000 Livers

Baylor University Medical Center’s 31-year-old transplant program is now the state’s only one to have transplanted more than 4,000 livers. The milestone came on Feb. 3, and makes it just one of three centers nationwide to reach that volume.

Dr. Goran Klintmalm launched Baylor’s transplant program in 1984, performing 30 procedures in the first year. The center’s volume has since ballooned to 4,000 and grown to include the transplant of nearly every major organ including heart, lungs, kidneys, and intestine. Baylor also recently launched a clinical trial to transplant a uterus. But it all began with the liver.

“Up to 1980, the mortality after the liver transplantation was 80 percent. Just take that in, 80 percent,” Klintmalm, Baylor’s chief and chairman of the Annette C. and Harold C. Simmons Transplant Institute, told me on its 30th anniversary. “Reimbursement for transplant was totally unclear, there was no general acceptance of this treatment.” Continue reading